Cop shoots and kills man who was wrongly in prison for 16 years
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: Family handout
A man who spent 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction has been killed by a police officer just three years after his release.
Leonard Allen Cure, 53, lost his life on Monday (16 October) after he was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy in Georgia.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a Camden County deputy pulled over Cure as he was driving along Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida line.
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Cure is said to have got out of his car and cooperated at first, but he allegedly became violent after being told he was being arrested.
When the driver failed to follow the police officer's demands, the deputy shocked him with a stun gun, the agency said.
The officer used the stun gun again after the driver started assaulting the deputy, but when he continued to resist the officer drew his gun and shot Cure.
The agency has not stated why Cure was pulled over in the first place.
Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, said he was devastated by the loss of Cure after his organization represented him in his exoneration case.
Cure spent almost two decades behind bars after being wrongfully convicted for the 2003 armed robbery of a drug store in Florida's Dania Beach.
Due to Cure's previous convictions for robbery and other crimes, he was sentenced to life in prison.
However, in 2020 the new Conviction Review Unit established by Broward State Attorney's Office found 'troubling' revelations that Cure had an alibi for the time of the crime which had previously been disregarded.
The unit asked a judge to release Cure, and in December 2020 his conviction and sentence were vacated.
In June 2023, Cure was granted $817,000 in compensation for his conviction and imprisonment.
Commenting on Cure's death just a couple of years after his release, Miller told CBS News: "I can only imagine what it's like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and ... then be told that once he's been freed, he's been shot dead. I can't imagine as a parent what that feels like."
Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor told the Sun Sentinel Cure was a 'smart, funny and kind person'.
"After he was freed and exonerated by our office, he visited prosecutors at our office and participated in training to help our staff do their jobs in the fairest and most thorough way possible," Pryor said.
"He would frequently call to check in on Assistant State Attorney Arielle Demby Berger, the head of the Conviction Review Unit, and offer our team encouragement to continue to do the important work of justice."
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is set to submit its findings in the case to the district attorney for the coastal Brunswick Judicial Circuit, which includes Camden County.